Cutaway or cross-section drawings are mostly just fancy residues of a long-gone era when engineering and architecture visualisation was based on hand-drawn images that were often closer to art than boring illustration.

Today, when mostly CAD and computer graphics rule the field, the following selection of images from the past seems so exciting. Make sure you click on the "expand" button on each picture to see all the delicious little details! And feel free to add your favorite cutaway building in the discussions below.

Section showing the interior of Wyld's Monster Globe, which stood in Leicester Square, London, from 1851 to 1861.

Image: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

An artist's impression showing of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, 1974.

Image: Space Frontiers/Getty Images

1950: Diagram of a typical subway bomb shelter proposed for New York City in a 104 Million dollar bomb shelter program outlined by the Board of Transportation.

Image: AP

1968: Drawing of the 10x10 foot wind tunnel at the Glenn Research Center.

View of a proposed Red Line station at Wilshire and La Brea, Los Angeles, 1983

Plan of BBC television centre, London, 1958.

Bonus photo: Architect Paolo Soleri rests in front of his “3-D Jersey,” a cutaway model on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, Feb. 17, 1970. It’s his idea of a supersonic jetport and city that might be built on the mud flats of New Jersey across the Hudson River from New York City. The structure he suggests is not just a jetport but a city, including hanging sunlit gardens, terminals and offices, hotels and theaters, and dwellings for one million.